Re: getdate fails to build

[Sam Steingold]

Bruno,

On Wed, Sep 29, 2010 at 12:33 PM, Bruno Haible <address@hidden> wrote:
> Sam,
>
>> why is getdate built at all on the latest ubuntu?
>> isn't glibc enough there?!
>
> Take a look at the module description (modules/getdate):
>
>  1) It says
>
>       Include:
>       "getdate.h"
>
>     Does glibc have a getdate.h include file?

posix does not require "getdate.h".
gnulib shouldn't either.

every time you replace some glibc functionality, it is a bug.
either in gnulib, or in glibc.


>  2) It says
>
>       Makefile.am:
>       lib_SOURCES += getdate.y
>
>     which means that getdate.y is compiled unconditionally.
>     Whereas platform-dependent compilations are usually triggered
>     through AC_LIBOBJ.

this is a bug in gnulib.

>> /bin/bash /home/sds/src/clisp/current/build-g//build-aux/ylwrap
>> /home/sds/src/clisp/current/modules/syscalls/gllib/getdate.y \
>>                                        y.tab.c getdate.c \
>>                                        y.tab.h getdate.h \
>>                                        y.output getdate.output \
>>                                        -- byacc   && \
>>          mv getdate.c getdate.c-t && \
>>          mv getdate.c-t
>> /home/sds/src/clisp/current/modules/syscalls/gllib/getdate.c
>> byacc: e - line 277 of
>> "/home/sds/src/clisp/current/modules/syscalls/gllib/getdate.y", syntax error
>> %pure-parser
>> ^
>> make[2]: *** [getdate.c] Error 1
>
> The getdate module comes with an autoconf macro gl_GETDATE, which requires
> gl_BISON, found in m4/bison.m4. This macro has a comment
> "# getdate.y works with bison only.", and sets the default value of YACC
> to 'bison -y'. Probably you had YACC set by another macro, and it ended
> up being 'byacc'. Since your package now includes getdate.y, it relies
> on bison. So you can ditch your other macro that determined YACC in a
> more relaxed way, and use bison.m4 instead.

this is another gnulib bug: it should have detected bad YACC at
configure time and failed then.

the bottom line is:
gnulib has no business requiring YACC on linux
gnulib has no business replacing glibc functions on linux

-- 
Sam Steingold <http://sds.podval.org>